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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 36, Number 17. July 18th, 1973

Pink Bidets for Cambodia

Pink Bidets for Cambodia

"The US has supplied pink bidets to Cambodia while refusing to provide federal funds for sewer and water projects at home," reports Senator W. J. Fulbright.

"It boggles the mind," the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee said in making public an excerpt from a government report on the shipment of bidets and other bathroom fixtures to Cambodia as part of the foreign aid program.

"The report, by the Inspector General of the Agency for International Development, said: 'Granting that bidets may be considered a necessity for high-born and foreign-educated Cambodians . . . surely there must be many other items with higher priority for which US taxpayers can be asked to pay'."

For the many "low-born" Americans who don't know what a bidet is one dictionary defines it as "a basin on a low, narrow stand for bathing the posterior parts of the body." It is found in all luxury bathrooms in France (and, of course, Cambodia used to be under France).